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22 February 2014

Chess960 Live on the Small Screen

While writing this post I'm watching my first live crossboard (OTB) chess960 games, direct from Moscow:
Indoor training rapid chess tournament
(chess-results.com; title by Google Translate).
I tuned into the event just as the last round was starting and captured the moment in the following screenshot.

The start position in all games was SP190 NRNKRBBQ, and the screenshot shows the first move from a game between GMs Grigoriants and Deviatkin. The players' were placed first and third before the game with a one point difference, so the game will be important for the final standings.

It turns out that SP190 was seen in another important game,
Nakamura vs. Aronian at Mainz 2009.
My post for that game linked to a previous post with a photo of the two players from the same game.

I mentioned GM Deviatkin on this blog near the end of last year -- the last time was
The Week in Chess960
-- and he's featured in another post that I haven't finished yet. I'll try to contact him for any thoughts on the Moscow tournament.

Meanwhile, the game Grigoriants - Deviatkin just ended in a draw. In a parallel game, GM Grachev won as Black. Since he was placed second going into the last round, he appears to have tied GM Grigoriants for first place. I expect the final standings to be posted shortly on chess-results.com. Whether or not I got it right, congratulations to the winners.

1 comment:

There is a very positive review of this event (with five unannotated games) now up on the Chess Vibes website http://www.chessvibes.com/moscow-chess960-fischerrandom-event-won-by-grigoriants-on-tiebreak

The comments under the article are (so far) generally very positive too, eg "Chess960 is the Future...Another brilliant Fischer's conception".